Emmy Award winner Jon Stewart hosts the 80th Academy Awards telecast, which will be broadcast live Feb. 24 from the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood and Highland Center on ABC-TV.

The official 80th Academy Awards poster.

The half-hour red carpet arrivals will be telecast beginning at 8 PM ET. Regis Philbin, Samantha Harris, Shaun Robinson, executive producer Gil Cates and producer Dennis Doty will co-host the 30-minute segment that features interviews with the various stars as they arrive for the film world's biggest night of the year.

Tony Award winner Kristin Chenoweth, who has been busy this past season delivering cheese-infused pies on the acclaimed ABC series "Pushing Daisies," will perform on the Oscar program. The Broadway favorite will duet with Marlon Saunders on the Oscar-nominated Alan Menken-Stephen Schwartz song "That's How You Know" from the film "Enchanted." Amy Adams, who stars in "Enchanted," will also perform a song from the film, Menken and Schwartz's "Happy Working Song." The third Oscar-nominated "Enchanted" song, "So Close," will be performed by Jon McLaughlin.

Other performers will include Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (singing "Falling Slowly" from "Once") and Jamia Simone Nash, who will be joined by the IMPACT Repertory Theatre of Harlem on the song "Raise It Up" from the film "August Rush." Nominations for the 80th Annual Academy Awards were announced Jan. 22 at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater in California. Although Tim Burton's acclaimed version of "Sweeney Todd" picked up a Golden Globe Award for Best Picture-Musical or Comedy, the film of the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler musical failed to pick up an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. The movie musical, however, did earn its star, Johnny Depp — who played the Demon Barber of Fleet Street — a Best Actor nomination. "Sweeney Todd" was also nominated for Art Direction and Achievement in Costume Design.

Other nominees of interest to theatre fans: Laura Linney, soon to return to the New York stage in the revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, was nommed in the category of Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for her work in "The Savages"; her competitors in that category include Cate Blanchett ("Elizabeth: The Golden Age"), Julie Christie ("Away from Her"), Marion Cotillard ("La Vie en Rose") and Ellen Page ("Juno"). Stage veteran Ruby Dee was nominated for a supporting Oscar for her performance in "American Gangster"; she will compete for the prize in a field that includes Cate Blanchett("I'm Not There"), Saoirse Ronan ("Atonement"), Amy Ryan ("Gone Baby Gone") and Tilda Swinton ("Michael Clayton"). The Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role category also includes two actors who have spent much time on the stage, Philip Seymour Hoffman ("Charlie Wilson's War") and Hal Holbrook ("Into the Wild"); their competitors include Casey Affleck ("The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"), Javier Bardem "No Country for Old Men") and Tom Wilkinson (“Michael Clayton").

Joel Cohen and Ethan Cohen — whose trio of plays, Almost an Evening, recently played the Atlantic Theater Company and will move to a commercial Off-Broadway run — were nominated for Academy Awards in three categories for their film "No Country for Old Men": Best Motion Picture of the Year, Achievement in Directing and Best Adapted Screenplay. The latter category also includes nominees Christopher Hampton ("Atonement") and Ronald Harwood ("The Diving Bell and the Butterfly") as well as Sarah Polley ("Away From Her") and Paul Thomas Anderson ("There Will Be Blood").

Nominees for the annual Academy Awards follow: (Winners name are in bold preceded by an asterisk.)

Nominees for the annual Academy Awards follow: (Winners name are in bold preceded by an asterisk.)

Best Picture "Atonement" "Juno" "Michael Clayton" *"No Country for Old Men" "There Will Be Blood"

Achievement in Cinematography "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" Roger Deakins "Atonement" Seamus McGarvey "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" Janusz Kaminski "No Country for Old Men" Roger Deakins *"There Will Be Blood" Robert Elswit